The Main Corpse
Page 13
I beat butter with sugar and put in a call to the sheriff’s department. Once again, Tom wasn’t at his desk. I said to his voice mail, “This is your wife, who’s making your scrumptious coffee cake. How about a date? This weekend?”
I hung up and smoothly blended cool, fat-free sour cream into the golden batter, then stirred in a spill of inky cherry preserves. The mixture was buttery-rich and fragrant with lemon and vanilla, and it occurred to me that I could eat the batter without even cooking it. I rid myself of such a devilish idea, slid the pan into the oven, and phoned Elk Park Prep.
“Yeah, this is Elk Park Prep, we’re closed now,” said Macguire’s voice.
“Macguire? Is that you or a recording?”
“Hi, Goldy, yeah, you’re speaking to me live. I don’t like answering the phone here.” He sighed extravagantly. “But … I guess even a private eye has to do his own phone work.”
I let this pass. “I just wanted to let you know I can do the bank gig this morning myself, and then I’m doing that doggone taste-test at Sam’s Soups, for Tony Royce, before he and Marla go on their fishing trip. I just didn’t know what your plans were—”
Sour Cream Cherry Coffee Cake
¼ pound (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup fat-free sour cream
2 cups all-purpose flour (High altitude: add 2 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon finely chopped lemon zest
½ cup best quality cherry preserves
Preheat oven to 350°. Butter 2 8-inch-square cake pans. In a large mixer bowl, beat butter with sugar until well combined; Add eggs one at a time and beat well. Add sour cream and mix thoroughly. In a small bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Batter will be stiff. Stir in the vanilla, zest, and cherry preserves. Spread batter in pans. Bake 20 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Makes 2 cakes.
Banana-Pecan Muffins
4½ cups all-purpose flour
1¼ cups sugar
5 teaspoons baking powder (High altitude: 4½ teaspoons)
1¼ teaspoons salt
1¼ cups mashed ripe banana
¼ cup canola oil
2 large eggs
1⅓ cups nonfat milk
1¼ cups pecan halves (do not chop)
Preheat the oven to 350°. Line 2 12-cup muffin tins with paper liners.
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In another large bowl, mix together the banana, canola oil, and eggs. Gradually add dry ingredients to banana mixture, alternating I with the milk, adding dry ingredients last. Stir in the nuts.
Measure out batter evenly into lined muffin cups, filling cups ⅞ full. Bake 25 minutes, until muffins are puffed and golden brown.
Check with toothpick for done-ness. Serve warm, or cool muffms on racks. Freeze for longer storage.
Makes 2 dozen.
Note: Muffms are about fifteen percent fat; to make them even lower in fat, omit the pecans.
“Oh, I have lots of plans. But don’t you even want to know what I’ve turned up? In my investigations?” Before I could answer, he rushed on with: “Victoria Lear was starting paperwork for the Securities and Exchange Commission, stuff you have to do before you have an initial public offering of stock. They call that an IPO. You see, for the Eurydice Mine, the three and a half million Prospect raised was called a private placement. Thirty-five investors had put up a hundred thou each. Over the next year, the Prospect partners were going to hire a mining company to bring the mine into production, at the same time they worked on the IPO. But the SEC demands all kinds of stuff for an IPO, and that’s where Victoria hit a snag. Right before she croaked. Anyway, that’s all Bitsy could get out of the secretary, who hasn’t worked there very long. The secretary even said that Mr. Lipscomb had come in and taken all of Victoria’s files on the Eurydice Mine out of her office right after the accident.”
“Good Lord.”
“Hey, do I do my job, or what? The secretary got nervous talking about Lear there in the office. She said she and Bitsy should go out for lunch. Should I tell Bitsy to keep poking around? Go have lunch with this woman?”
Jake began barking furiously at the garbage man, even though he was at least six houses away. I told Macguire yes, he was fabulous and yes, Bitsy should go out for lunch with Lear’s secretary, and continue to poke around as much as possible without arousing suspicion. I signed off and called Jake inside. As the hound trotted toward me with a distinctly guilty air, I hugged myself against the chill wind and considered. So Victoria Lear was working on assembling paperwork for the SEC. Not that that was related to her death, but one had to wonder. What kind of paperwork was required for an IPO? I settled Jake in Arch’s room, where he no doubt jumped on the bed the instant I closed the door, then returned to the kitchen to finish the cooking for the bank affair. For the muffins, I whirled blackened bananas in my blender until they were dense and smooth, measured whole pecan halves into the flour mixture, and began to spoon the thick batter into paper cups.
The fragrant hot cherry cake emerged from my oven puffed, golden brown, and speckled with the dark berries. I slipped the tin of banana muffins in, closed the oven door, and took two dozen poppy seed muffins out of the freezer. Then I sliced and skewered the fruit, made a batch of Scottish scones on Tom’s oversize griddle, and donned a fresh chef’s jacket. Within forty-five minutes I had the fruit, muffins, scones, and cake packed, and I headed purposefully toward the bank.
“Oh, Goldy!” cried Eileen with her usual melodrama when I carried my lusciously scented goodies past her office. She jumped up to greet me. Eileen engaged in an aerobic and muscle-conditioning program that would put Arnold Schwarzenegger to shame. She also visited with bank clients while working with big free weights; she claimed to be a living symbol of the bank’s strength. Whatever works. “I’m so glad you’re here!” she exclaimed. Her blue eyes shone beneath black lashes, and her long black hair was tightly woven in a French braid. She wore a pink silk shirt that slid flatteringly over her sinewy shoulders. A short black skirt hugged powerful hips. I didn’t know how strong the bank was, but I’d lay money on Eileen. “We’re in some kind of mess, I can tell you that,” she continued. “Thanks in no small part to Prospect Financial Partners. Creeps!”
“Well, let’s hear all about it,” I said as we headed into the empty conference room. I uncovered the first tray and offered it to her. “Have something to eat. Food heals all messes.”
Eileen plucked a banana muffin from the platter. “Lowfat?”
I nodded. “Even lower if you don’t count the pecans.”
She shrugged and bit greedily into the muffin. “Mm-mm, yum. First thing I’ve had to eat today.”
“What’s the problem with Prospect Financial Partners?” I asked casually. “They don’t use Bank of Aspen Meadow, do they?”
“No, but our merger with First of the Rockies becomes final today. A whole bunch of our account numbers are being changed to avoid duplication. Customers who didn’t order checks are coming in totally irate. Not to mention the confusion with the doggone ATM cards. And of course I’m on the phone every other minute about this Lipscomb disappearance.” She put the muffin down and looked wistfully out the window. “I knew Dottie Quentin, the teller Albert Lipscomb ran off with. She’s probably on her way to Cozumel right now.” She sighed and nibbled more muffin. “Dottie was looking for a guy like Albert. She even had a copy of that infernal book. How to Meet and Marry a Millionaire. In this case, he’s worth a tad more than a million,” she concluded darkly.
“I know, I heard,” I said sympathetically. “A three-and-a-half millionaire. Does the bank stand to lose money?”
Prospect had the money, for a change? Hmm. Two employees came in and started to moan to Eileen about the new ATM cards; I busied myself slicing the rest of the cherry cake.
When the employees left and Eileen again assumed a morose expression, I ventured over with the muffintray. “How old was that bank teller—did you say her name was Dottie Quentin?”
“Twenty-four. Dottie was my protégé during an exchange program between the branches. That dumb girl, I swear. I just wish I could talk to her.”
I nodded sympathetically. “Albert wasn’t that attractive, and he certainly didn’t impress me as the kind of guy who could make love to you with words. Did he impress you that way?”
“Oh, no.” She may have been in the middle of a bank merger crisis, and her protégé may have run off with a rich embezzler, but Eileen’s dark-lashed blue eyes, which she tried to keep downcast, gleamed with triumph. Maybe she wasn’t such a good actress after all.
“There’s nobody here,” I ventured, always one to take advantage of an opportunity for further sleuthing. “Want to sit down and visit for a little bit?” She nodded, and I poured two cups of coffee. “What I wonder,” I said carefully, “is why he did it. Lipscomb, I mean. Three and a half million shouldn’t be that much to a big money guy, should it?”
“It is if it’s all you’ve got in the account,” Eileen replied slyly. “Besides, maybe Albert wasn’t motivated so much by money. Maybe what he really wanted was to get back at Tony Royce for something.”
“Revenge? But get back at him for what?” I asked innocently.
She shrugged. “What few people know is that that mine was Tony’s baby as much as it was Albert’s. Albert usually analyzed their investments, while Tony brought in the clients. That’s how they cleaned up on Medigen. But Albert inherited the mine, so he was the official promoter looking for cash investors. Tony was desperate to analyze his own project. He told me so himself. First he was going to score with Albert’s mine, then he’d move on to regional restaurants.” She waved her hand dismissively. “But first, Prospect would have to prove Eurydice still had gold; second, go public with their little enterprise; and third, make a bundle. Maybe things went sour. Maybe Albert decided to clean out their partnership account and leave Tony …”—she smiled—“high and dry.”
“But … what could possibly have gone sour, Eileen? I mean, Marla just lost her temper over something she didn’t understand in the assay report. My understanding is that you do lots and lots of assays to be sure a mine has gold or silver or whatever it is you’re looking for. Surely one bad assay wouldn’t be enough to ruin the whole project?”
She shrugged again. “Who knows? Because they’re not going to be doing any more exploration up there for a while. Not without money. Albert Lipscomb certainly saw to that,” she added maliciously.
I smiled at her and sipped coffee. “Clearly that doesn’t cause you any pain. You must not be a Prospect client.”
“I would never invest in one of their ventures.” Her voice had turned back to vinegar. “God forbid.”
“How come?”
Three employees appeared at the door. “It’s not something I can talk about,” Eileen replied curtly, and moved off to greet her workers. I got to my feet and offered fruit, coffee, and baked goods to the new arrivals. They dug in happily. When they left twenty minutes later, fed and content, Eileen lingered to pour herself some more coffee. She still looked hungry for conversation, so this time I decided to try a new tack.
“You know what I wonder about,” I said conspiratorially, “is how, in this day and age of bank security, a guy like Albert Lipscomb could talk his way into a big wad of cash and a compliant teller.”
Eileen glanced nervously at the conference door, blew on her coffee, and gestured with the muffin she held in her hand. “Oh, we know that part. Lipscomb went into the downtown branch of First of the Rockies Monday morning, June the seventh. He had a big check written out to himself, three and a half mil. He wanted cash. What did they teach him about banking in business school, I’d like to know? You can’t expect to get same-day service with that size transaction. So the teller—my idiot friend Dottie—said, ‘You have to order that kind of cash, we can’t get it for you right away.’ She alerted the officer, but the officer was drowning in this merger. So the officer told her, ‘Order the cash, and convince the guy to come back tomorrow for it.’ The officer told Dottie he’d join her in a minute to do the Large Currency Transaction Report. Required by the federal government, thank you very much, because of all the drug traffic,” she said to forestall my question. She took a big bite of muffin, spilling crumbs over the conference table. She didn’t seem to notice them. “Anytime you’re doing cash over ten thousand deposited or withdrawn, you have to fill out a Large Currency Transaction Report.”
I dumped my cold coffee and poured myself a new cup. “And what did Albert say to all this? I mean, it sounds as if he expected to leave that day with a couple of briefcases full of cash.”
“Apparently he had all the right identification for the Transaction Report.” Eileen sighed. “Albert left, then came back the next morning all smiles and charm, with a glitter in his eyes and a shine on his bald head. He loaded that three and a half mil into a large backpack, said thank you very much, and walked out. After the transaction, Dottie bubbled over telling all her co-workers how cute her rich customer was, and how nifty it was that he seemed so interested in her! She gushed about how she was going out to lunch with him. Which she did. And didn’t come back. Wednesday morning, Tony Royce called the bank about overdraft protection for some large checks to his mine exploration people. You’d better believe the salami hit the fan. There wasn’t enough money in the account to pay the exploration people, forget overdraft. Royce screamed and yelled and had a fit. He would never cosign on a withdrawal of that amount! Albert Lipscomb must have forged his signature on that check! Tony swore to decapitate the bank manager! And if one word of this got out, he said, he’d firebomb the damn bank!”
“What did the bank manager say?”
“Oh, my dear, that’s the problem. The bank manager says they need to question Dottie, but she’s drinking piña coladas in parts unknown. Now they’re saying Dottie might have been in on the deal with Albert from the beginning.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m just waiting for someone to call me in and say, ‘You trained this woman? What in heaven’s name did you teach her?’”
I swirled my coffee, hardly able to conceal my curiosity. “I wonder what makes people think they were in on it together?”
Blithely, Eileen waved a hand, scattering still more crumbs. “Because she didn’t call Prospect that day to confirm the check was valid. Still, I do believe the conspiracy theory is a rumor perpetuated by the bank so the teller won’t look quite so stupid. People will excuse crime before they dream of acquitting imbecility. My tellers, of course, are all spooked. They’re playing What would you do with a rich stranger until I am sick to death of it.” She frowned. Then she finished off the muffin.
“I wonder if Tony had insurance,” I said idly.
“For that type of account? No way. I mean, he’d be insured up to a hundred thousand if the bank collapsed, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about loss of cash, period. Maybe forgery. Serves Prospect Financial right, I say.”
Once again I found myself wondering about the precise origin of Eileen’s bitterness. Was she so triumphant because Prospect had lost the private placement money? Or because Tony had jilted her? We were interrupted by the arrival of the second gaggle of excited employees. I picked up our coffee cups while Eileen chatted with her people. After a few minutes, sh
e wandered back to me to say she had to check her messages. I asked if she’d return to clarify Friday’s upcoming assignment. Of course, I didn’t give a hoot about next week’s gig; I wanted to know what else she knew about Albert and the missing millions. But as I served coffee and delicacies to first the tellers, then the loan officers, I became intrigued with their conversations. Nobody ever thinks a caterer is listening. And you don’t mean to be eavesdropping, you’re just the invisible servant who hears people talk.
—–Well, I’d go out to lunch with a stranger if he’d picked up three and a half million in cash. Even if he did go to the Citadel.
—–Not me! Don’t forget, she refused to give him the cash the first day, and you know they keep lots more than that in the downtown branch.
—–Maybe he was pissed off.
—–Maybe he was asking her how he could get his three and a half million without his partner knowing.
While I was cleaning up, Eileen came back in. She looked even more harried than she had when I arrived. “They’re going to have a big meeting in an hour about this missing-Lipscomb-and-Dottie predicament. Big meeting means long meeting, and I’m starving just thinking about it. Would you fix me a plate?” When I nodded, she went on: “The regional managers from all over are getting antsy for an internal investigation. And damage control is out of the question now. So many people know how much money was taken, it’s just a matter of time before investors start trying to bail out of Prospect, and the whole enterprise goes belly-up.” I expected her to frown again, but she snickered.